City of Light

Chapter EIGHTEEN



Paris



April 27



12:20 AM



The four of them gaped at the simple glass tumbler as if Geraldine had somehow managed to unearth the Holy Grail.

“You’re certain it’s the right one?” Trevor asked, for the third time in as many minutes.

“Of course,” Geraldine said. “I noted the exact moment when Delacroix drained his glass and put it on the serving tray.”

“And you didn’t smudge it with any prints of your own?”

“Really, Trevor, you must have a little more faith in me. I balled up my fist and thrust it in the glass and then expanded my fingers and voila - the tumbler came right up with it. And then I went straight to the maid and retrieved my cloak for concealment and then sent her to collect the three of you and from that point you all know precisely what happened.” Geraldine exhaled with vigor. “I may have brushed it slightly at one point with my cloak but I don’t think I did. I took great care.”

“Well done, Auntie,” Tom murmured. He had brought the flame of a candle to the glass and was studying it from every angle. “It’s mixed with something, perhaps powdered sugar from those figs Delacroix was eating all night, so with any luck we have a workable print. We’ll take it to the police lab first thing in the morning. And we must wire Davy to send the Hammond print. By courier, I’d suppose?”

Trevor nodded slowly, his hand to his mouth.

“Then in the meantime, I suggest we try to get a good night’s rest,” said Geraldine. “I don’t think a single one of us has slept more than four hours within the last forty-eight, and if we grow any more exhausted, we shall all lose the gift of deduction entirely. Honestly Trevor, you must remove that worried look from your face and welcome this glass as a gift from the Fates. I don’t know what the word is for it, but you seem to be one of those people who are more disturbed by good news than bad.”

“No, not at all,” said Trevor although her observation was actually apt. A stroke of fortune always made him feel as if he were being set up for a fall. “I’m delighted to have this glass in my possession. If the prints match and we can prove that Delacroix is the same man who was running the brothel on Cleveland Street, then we can arrest him in the name of Scotland Yard.”

“And once you get him alone, he will talk,” Emma said, glancing at Trevor, who didn’t glance back.

“Oh yes,” he said quietly. “Once I get him alone, he most certainly will talk.”

2:49 AM

“Where is she?”

“You tell me.”

Rayley had been tracking the movements of the small panel of light across the far wall of his room and this, along with the steady and helpful chime of church bells, had led him to believe that another full day had passed.

Armand Delacroix had entered the room a few minutes earlier and positioned himself precariously on the overturned bucket in the corner of the cell. Rayley had sat up in bed to face him, taking care to seem a bit more unsteady than he actually was. Ever since his accidental nausea had taught him that this was an effective means of lessening the impact of the chloroform on his system, he had employed a more calculated means of expunging the drug, taking care to hide the evidence beneath his mattress. He certainly didn’t intend to announce his relative sobriety to Delacroix, so Rayley slumped against the wall and allowed his lips to part in the suggestion of a stupor.

“I have no desire to be unreasonable, Detective,” Delacroix said, smooth and elegant as ever, despite his rather vulgar position crouched on the pail. “I simply need to know what you’ve done with her.”

What he had done with her? It seemed to Rayley that the question should be going in the other direction. “You’ve seen Isabel since I have,” he said. “You escorted her to the police station on the evening of April 23 to provide your alibi, did you not? A trip she most certainly made under duress.” Rayley was trying to walk a fine line between engaging Delacroix in fruitful conversation while still sounding suitably drugged.

“Don’t play me for a fool, Detective. It’s clear enough that you’ve somehow helped her get back to London. I know for a fact that she wrote you, asking you to meet her at dawn at the tower on the day she disappeared.”

A sudden tickle of nausea rose in Rayley’s throat and his hand rose automatically to his mouth. Delacroix watched him with alarm, an expression that Rayley noted even as he struggled to contain the sensation.

“Are you all right?”

A strange question coming from the man who held him captive, a man who had supplied him with nothing but lukewarm water, cold potatoes, and steady doses of chloroform for the last two days.

“I won’t deny that I received that note,” Rayley said, after shaming himself with a slight belch. “It would be foolish to do so when that was the very morning your hired thug beset me and brought me here. The note was a trap, so why are we pretending otherwise?”

Delacroix gave a subtle, almost apologetic, lift of his shoulders. “My dear man, if Isabel’s note had truly been a trap, you’d already be dead. And since you clearly are not, I believe you must accept my statement. My associate Gerard was sent to the tower that morning with the expectation that he would find both you and Isabel. How did she put it? ‘Meet me at dawn,’ I believe was the phrase. So typical. I doubt that the woman has ever actually learned to read a clock.”

“So you were spying on her. How did you do it? Bribe her maid?”

“It was hardly necessary to bribe the maid when I’m the one paying the maid,” Delacroix said with a wry twist of his mouth. “I pay everyone. It’s one of the disadvantages of being the boss. But learning the contents of Isabel’s note was merely, as they say, icing on the cake. It was inevitable that she would eventually try to flee and that she would turn to you as her most likely avenue of help. That’s what she does, you know, she categorizes men the minute she meets them, and decides in an instant how each one might be useful at some point in the future. Naturally if she wished to travel under protection from one country to another, she would throw herself on the mercy of her dear new friend, Detective Rayley Abrams of Scotland Yard.”

Rayley leaned back against the chipped plaster of the cell wall. At least this was an explanation for why he was being kept alive. Armand Delacroix believed that Rayley knew where Isabel was hiding. The good news was that it meant Isabel was presumably still alive and still free of Delacroix’s clutches. Delacroix would almost certainly have not taken the risk of holding a Scotland Yard detective if he had even the slightest clue to her whereabouts. The bad news is that Delacroix was mostly likely now in this cell because his own efforts to find Isabel had proven fruitless and he was prepared to employ means to make Rayley talk. Means that Rayley would not enjoy.

At least I don’t have to fear I might betray Isabel in a moment of agony, Rayley thought. For I have not the slightest idea where she might have gone.

Armond looked at him soberly. “I am not a violent man, Detective Abrams.”

It was said without inflection, neither a promise nor a threat.

“And I am not a foolish one, Monsieur Delacroix.”

“No, but you are a curious sort. A busybody, a snoop, one who piddles in the business of other men. To be fair, I suppose your profession demands it. As did the profession of your friend, Mr. Graham.”

“Not my friend,” Rayley said. “I scarcely knew him.” In the distance, the church bells chimed. One. Two. Three.

“Ah,” said Delacroix. “You deny your friend and three bells ring. Rather like the Biblical crowing of the cock.”

Rayley looked away from his insolent gaze.

“But perhaps you are not familiar with the allusion,” Delacroix continued. “It’s from the New Testament and you are Jewish, are you not?”

“I scarcely see what my religion has to do with the matter at hand.”

For some reason, Delacroix found this remark amusing. He leaned back and laughed, then rustled in his pocket for a match. Rayley flinched as he struck it against the sole of his shoe, the flame blazing up like the sun in the darkened room.

“Oh, but it has everything to do with it, Detective, for your Hebrew heritage is the very reason you find yourself in France. Jack the Ripper implicates the Jews in one of his wild rants and a moment later our most esteemed Detective Abrams is pulled off the case and all the potential glory falls to one Trevor Welles. What could be left for you except to take a post studying in France?”

Rayley struggled to keep his face composed. How the devil had the man learned all that? And to state it so smoothly? His English, Rayley suddenly thought, the pit of dread growing in his stomach. He’s careful to maintain a flicker of a French accent, but his English is far too good. Even Carle was not so at ease with the phrasing, nor so casual with the syntax.

“Your information is impressive, Monsieur,” he said cautiously.

In the shadows, his mouth barely visible beneath the glow of his cigar, Delacroix continued to smile. “What a disappointment it must have been for you, stepping aside in favor of that fat fool.”

And how the devil did the man know Trevor was fat? “I believe,” Rayley said calmly, “that the better term is ‘portly’”

“You’re wondering how I know what the man looks like,” Delacroix said, flicking ashes to the concrete floor. “The truth is that I didn’t, until tonight.”

Trevor was in Paris?

“I saw Detective Welles this very evening at a soiree,” Delacroix continued, “trying to pass for gentry and failing miserably. He was in the company of an arrogant boy who clearly fancies himself a citizen of the world, an elderly woman in the most appalling shade of pea green, and a rather pretty girl. She spoke passable French as well, but then she had to go and ruin it all by attempting to flirt with me, which was a very silly thing for her to do.”

So they had all come, save possibly Davy. Rayley was simultaneously gratified and alarmed. For if Armand Delacroix had learned Trevor’s identity so easily, his network of spies must be deep indeed.

“And was the party a success?”

“But of course. Madame Seaver is one of the most celebrated hostesses in Paris, sparing no expense in her efforts to dazzle her guests. Annie Oakley was there in her cowboy hat and I believe your friends were quite diverted. But as for me, the experience was tedious. I had hoped to use this occasion to introduce my niece to society but all anyone could do was ask about Isabel.”

When Rayley made no response, Armand Delacroix abruptly rose to his feet and walked slowly toward the door. “Goodbye for now, Detective,” he said, pausing in the doorframe to look back. “I have no doubt that we shall shortly meet again. But in the meantime my associate Gerard – a thug, I think you called him? - has agreed to remain here and see if he can help you recover a bit of your memory.”

3:15 AM



The view of the city was astounding at this height, especially at night. Despite the whipping wind, Isabel leaned against the railing without fear and pulled the silken wrap more tightly around her naked body. Her hair was still chopped short around her ears, her face unadorned, and her feet bare, but whenever silk met flesh, wherever there was cut crystal and fine wines and plump pillows and candlelight reflected in broad mirrors, then somehow she was still Isabel.

In fact here, in this place which was simultaneously so strange and so familiar, she felt her anxiety fading for the first time in days.

Isabel had not been surprised when Armand had demanded she befriend Rayley Abrams and Patrick Graham. A detective and a reporter were precisely the sort of men to activate Armand’s paranoia, all those dark suspicions which lay just beneath his surface charm. Although at the time Isabel had argued with Armand about the necessity of such a task, she had eventually bowed to the inevitable. She had flirted with the two men at the party, had climbed the tower with them a day or two later, and then dutifully reported back everything she had learned to Armand, just as she had so many times before.

He appeared to have been placated. He had kissed her sedately on the forehead, as a matter of fact, as if she had been an obedient child.

The next day she had risen early, dressed as a boy, and gone out to sketch. Again, there was nothing uncommon in this. Isabel preferred to draw in the morning when the light was gentle and the city still slept. When she had happened to see a crowd gathered at the river she had paused, not in anticipation of finding anything interesting on the banks below, but rather because James always said that crowds offered the best chance to study a preoccupied human face. She had been sketching a woman on the bridge who was staring down with gap-mouthed fascination when Isabel’s own eyes had happened to drift toward the source of that fascination.

Patrick Graham. Stretched out on the riverbank, most very clearly dead, with Rayley Abrams bent over him.

Isabel had been so startled at the sight that she had dropped her sketchbook, sending it spinning over the side of the bridge and into the Seine where it hit the muddy water with a splash and caused the people around her to snort and laugh. But Isabel had merely sat, one arm around a lamp post, leaning forward, watching the scene with such intensity that at one point Rayley Abrams had actually paused in his work and looked up in her direction, as if he could somehow feel the heat of her stare.

Isabel held few illusions about men or about the harsh world which they occupied - but sex and secrets were one thing and it was an entirely different matter for people to start turning up dead, especially a man with whom she had casually chatted only days before. As unthinkable as it was that Armand was responsible for this grisly tableau stretched out beneath her, it would be even more irrational to pretend that he was not. Armand’s request that she spy on the men evidently had not been one of his random obsessions, but part of some larger plan - and thus she must have unwittingly played a role in Graham’s death. Isabel had watched until Rayley supervised the loading of the body on a stretcher and followed it up the steep bank to the waiting cart. When he was out of sight, she had run straight back to her house and scribbled her breathless note. Please help me. I have to go home.

She had no doubt that Abrams would respond to her request to meet. He had to know that they both were in danger and besides, he was eager. Eager to help her, eager to kiss her, eager to save her and take her to bed. The next morning, when she approached the tower in the early light, she had seen him there waiting, pacing and shivering. He had come too early, that poor, foolish man, but he had come, that was the important thing. Her spirits had lifted, her feet had quickened. With any luck she would be back in London before nightfall. But just as she had been about to call out to him, Isabel had seen Gerard approaching as well, from the opposite direction. She had ducked into the shadows, watched from behind a garden gate, but there had not been much to see. The story had been resolved with a stunning swiftness - Gerard stepping into the garish glow of the streetlight, Rayley startled, the flash of a white handkerchief, which had rendered him pliant within seconds of being pressed to his face.

So that was how they did it.

Gerard had been preoccupied with lifting and carrying Rayley’s limp body and did not see Isabel turn and retreat. She had run to the ghettos down by the river, to that part of town where people ask so few questions. She had traded her fine clothes for a working man’s rags, had wandered mindlessly and fearfully through a long day, and spent the night sleeping on the stony ground of the riverbank.

The luck, if there was any, was that Isabel’s survival skills had not been completely dulled by her years of fine living. By the end of the second day she had found both a humble job and a grandiose point of sanctuary. The aerie suited her. As a child she had imagined herself to be a princess in a tower and indeed, this was precisely what she had now become: A woman trapped in elevated seclusion, looking down at the pretty snarl of the city beneath her, the river tossed like an abandoned ribbon, shining silver in the moonlight. Here she stood, waiting for one man to come and save her from another, although who this rescuer might be, or even the precise face of her oppressor, Isabel could no longer say. In her childhood games, it had all been much clearer. Life is never so cruel as when it gives us precisely what we have said that we want.

Isabel turned slowly on the narrow balcony – more of a parapet, actually – and reentered the apartment. It was a jewel set atop a high crown, each detail perfect in its execution. Miniature, true, but far more elegant than the house Armand had leased for her in Paris or even the grand old home George Blout had provided in London. The mirrors and crystal glittered in the candlelight and the fabrics on the furniture were as soft as a whisper. She regretted that she would soon be forced to leave.

Getting a job working on the tower had been a rare stroke of luck, but once she had been hired, it had proven easy enough to hide behind the high stairwells as each day’s labors came to a close. The engineers who supervised the work were the sort of men who thought of both everything and nothing. They stationed guards at the elevator on the bottom level to make sure no one crept into the tower at night, but they had employed virtually no method of ensuring that all the workmen left at the end of the day. It would not have surprised Isabel to learn there were several of her sewer rat comrades also sleeping at various points on the tower, although she was undoubtedly the only one bold enough to claim Eiffel’s aerie for her own. In the morning she would go down the series of spiral staircases and hide somewhere on the lower level. She would give herself time to recover from the descent, for while going down is always easier than going up, the steps were still numerous and tricky. When the elevator spit out the first load of workmen, she would wait for them to disperse and then insinuate her way among them. No one notices the comings and goings of just one more nameless man.

Isabel sat down on a red velvet armchair and gazed up at her portrait. It was hung over the settee, the largest and most dominant piece of art in this artful room. Each picture has its personal code, James had often told her, with the clues plain enough to anyone with the eyes to perceive them. But so few people really look. They see what they expect to see, nothing more, and Isabel’s entire life has been built on this principle. It is not hard to fool people when they do not want to know the truth.